Thursday, July 24, 2008

When Al Gore called last week for a crash program of developing wind energy, among those who stood up and saluted was billionaire oil driller T. Boone Pickens. Pickens has already invested over $2 billion in a large wind-turbine farm on the arid plains of Texas, and pledges much further work on bringing investors together to help him install thousands more turbines—at about $1 million apiece—throughout the Plains states.

In a followup interview on Meet the Press, Gore was clear that he differs with Pickens on one issue: Gore thinks that the United States should lead the leap toward electric cars, while Pickens sees wind-generated power for electricity and natural gas for cars.Here on the windy shore of Lake Erie, adjacent to very large reservoirs of natural gas, we have a peculiar window on the national choice—whether to pump billions of public and private dollars into further erecting lakeshore and hilltop wind turbines, or similar amounts into pulling more natural gas out of the Southern Tier.The good news: We’re slightly ahead of the game.What we have, what it’ll takeIn 2001, County Executive Joel Giambra quietly hired engineers from Ecology and Environment, Inc., a national consulting firm based locally, to assess the potential of generating electricity with wind turbines at the old Bethlehem Steel site.A few years later, the Steel Winds project was a reality, and Giambra had another Little Red Hen moment—because every politician from miles around was there to cut the ribbon on America’s first urban wind farm. Despite an early equipment glitch, Steel Winds pumps out power whenever there’s enough wind, which is most of the time.But the Steel Winds project is tiny. It is eight turbines, on the way to becoming, perhaps, 20—a great and highly worthy start, but so far, enough to supply fewer than 10,000 homes in a county of 300,000 households.Al Gore and T. Boone Pickens want tens of thousands of such wind turbines to sprout up in every suitable place in this country— and the experts say that there’s almost no limit to what they can produce.Experts think highly of the wind-generating potential of the Great Lakes shoreline, and of the Great Lakes shallows, too. At a June conference in windy Kingston, Ontario, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, the world association of wind-power advocates was hosted by the government of Ontario.There’s very serious interest in wind up north. Existing coal-fired plants are due to come offline in 2013. Nuclear plants (Ontario quietly relies on them) won’t come online until 2018. Ontario officials estimated that by 2013—five years from now, half the way to Al Gore’s proposed 2018 deadline for full replacement of existing fossil-fuel-fired plants with renewables—they could build a big offshore Lake Ontario wind turbine farm that would generate 750 megawatts.According to Moody’s Investors Service, which analyzed the rising cost of atomic power in Canada, the cost of wind compares favorably. A new nuclear plant would cost more than $7,000 per kilowatt of capacity, or $5.3 billion for every 750 megawatts. A consultant to Ontario prices offshore wind development around $3,800 per kilowatt, or $2.9 billion for 750 megawatts of offshore wind capacity.The numbers would seem to work. Other considerations seem to work too: Building a few thousand wind-turbines could lead to hiring a few thousand metal-savvy factory workers, like the ones who are getting laid off at North American automobile plants. Wind turbines don’t require constant supplies of mined uranium. Nor do they produce toxic cesium, plutonium, or other deadly radioactive byproducts that have half-lives of hundreds to thousands of years.Some folks expect to see wind developing quickly, no matter who is elected president—because in an environment of high oil prices, investors will drive the change. Next week in San Francisco, there will be an investor (speculator?) conference sponsored by a couple of dozen consultants, banks, law firms, and possibly even the government-owned power producers who want to get in.The reality for New York: Wind is realThere was actually a meeting here in Buffalo, in May, at which Larry Flowers of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory reviewed the costs and benefits of wind energy in a very thorough state-by-state analysis.Flowers estimated that if the US relies on wind power for 20 pecent of its energy needs by 2030, there would be a significant benefit to the Great Lakes states. New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin would see over 182,000 new jobs in the one- to two-year construction phase, and 29,000 new long-term jobs in the 20-year operational phase. There would be a total economic benefit of $79 billion—assuming that more of the turbines, the towers, and those insanely long blades are manufactured here. (Flowers’ presentation is available at http://www.glc.org/energy/wind/presentations/Flowers.pdf.)There are, however, other realities. First, the companies that manufacture turbines, towers, and blades aren’t here yet. Ontario, where employers don’t have to foot the bill for employee healthcare costs all alone, is chasing them, and will probably have a leg up on New York State—just as they’ve had in landing new Toyota and Honda plants—if only for that reason. Second, while New York State and the other Great Lakes states have good wind resources, and while New York State has a self-imposed requirement to get to 24 percent renewable energy sources by 2013, there is a huge infrastructure issue: transmission lines. While Ontario will have a unified, government-coordinated approach, expect a patchwork approach here.Meanwhile, Southern Tier gasT. Boone Pickens is a billionaire who knows how to make money from drilling for gas and oil. As local news consumers know (and anybody who grew up south of Hamburg also knows), there’s a whole lot of natural gas underground in Western New York and northern Pennsylvania. One can read the real estate ads and spot properties for sale with existing gas wells, which are tidy little structures that sit quietly in many a Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, and Allegheny County backyard.Now, however, there is the Marcellus Formation. It is a geological mother-lode of natural gas resources. It is a stratum of shale whose natural gas reserves were estimated by geologists Gary Lash of SUNY at Fredonia and Terry Engelder of Pennsylvania State University to be up to 516 trillion cubic feet. Of that total volume, an estimated 50 trillion cubic feet could be recoverable, two years worth of national natural gas consumption.Fifty trillion cubic feet of natural gas is worth at least $1 trillion. Drilling the Marcellus Formation for this bonanza will cost more than the drilling that occurs today; new techniques will have to be used. But the high price of this commodity makes the new drilling technology financially feasible.The convenional reserves known today to be present around Buffalo total about 250 billion cubic feet. According to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, last year 41.29 billion cubic feet of natural gas were produced from the Black River Formation, an area of limestone and dolomite wells throughout southern and central New York State. These figures pale in comparison to the capacity of the Marcellus Formation.While the region is well equipped with pipelines for transport, the drilling infrastructure will cost investors upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars. Companies are already lined up to make the investment. National Fuel, along with a partner, intends to drill 18 wells in the Marcellus Formation by the end of this year. Such pricey ventures were previously excessive, but given the rising price of natural gas—a residential price of $14.30 per 1000 cubic feet in March 2008, up from $12.92 the month before—gas recovery from shale is now a viable financial strategy.Gas producers are read y to go. They’re already planning to go. The national strategy that Al Gore wants will depend on presidential and congressional will. Meanwhile, though, expect that Western New York’s experience—small-scale wind production and a big ramp-up in natural gas production—will be typical.Research assistance by Kate LaMancuso gratefully acknowledged.

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Shakespeare: every high school English student is familiar with at least one of his works. Some dread the unit, while others appreciate the Bard’s skill with words.

“Ever since I was little, my parents would take me to see this. When I was about eight or something, we got here in time to see the intern show and I just went ‘I wanna do that, I wanna do that,’ and as soon as I could I applied,” said Chloe Fischer, 16, a three-year veteran of the Shakespeare in Delaware Park intern program.

Shakespearience, as it is called, is an opportunity for area high school students to get hands-on theater experience as stage crew members. The interns work side by side with the actors and stage crew in actual productions of Shakespeare in the Park. This unique arrangement is not lost on the interns.

“I think it’s really important that if you’re going to be involved in theater, that you understand all aspects of the theater, not just acting,” said Rita Sirianni, who will be a junior at Nardin Academy in the fall.

Shakespearience runs in two four-week sessions that correspond with the productions, one from the end of June to the middle of July, and one from the end of July to the middle of August.

“I learned that a lot of the onstage stuff is really dependent on the set and how things are set,” said Alex Zlateff, who will be a sophomore at St. Joseph’s Collegiate in the fall.

The duties range from moving scenery and opening doors to rescuing the equipment when it rains.

“Like everyone else, I’m backstage. I am considered a ‘Gloucester Girl,’ as I run the Gloucester banners that go up and down,” said Chloe.

But not all the work is behind the scenes.

“They get an opportunity to take classes in acting and in period dance, combat and in all sorts of different things with professionals in the area,” said Kyle LoConti, the production stage manager for Shakespeare in Delaware Park.

The typical day starts at 1:30 with classes and rehearsals. There is a dinner break, then the show, which ends around 11 p. m. The performance runs six days a week. “It’s a lot of work, that’s why we interview the kids before the program starts and then select the ones that we think can make it through the whole program, it’s very arduous,” said Beth Donahue, the head instructor for Shakespearience.

But all the time and dedication pays off. At the end of the festival, the interns put on their own production as a pre-show. For this session, it was the comedy “As You Like It.”

“He’s this lord who gets banished to the forest and totally embraces it and takes on this whole ‘I am the walrus’ essence and goes hippie,” said Rita of her character, Duke Senior, who also plays the roles of Oliver and Corin.

“I do get really bad stage fright, though, I usually have to start tap-dancing or something to get the jitters out,” said Rita.

“I’ve learned to be a better actress. It’s easier for me to learn and remember lines, and I know a lot more about Shakespeare,” said Chloe.

As Jaques in this year’s initial offering, “King Lear,” says. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” For these interns, their world really is a stage and they are much more than mere players.

The theory and practice of cities

Welcome to the first draft of a site where the premise is simple: that civilization is about cities. At the moment, this page is mostly a collection of my published articles. I hope soon for it to become a forum for discussion about how (not whether!) to refocus federal and state policy on the task of renewing the Great Lakes cities.Stay tuned, and please share your experiences, your insights and your recommendations on whose theory or practice we should embrace or avoid.Thanks,Bruce Fisher

Profile

is the founding director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies at Buffalo State College, where he is visiting professor of Economics. He lives in Buffalo, New York, where he served as deputy county executive from 2000 to 2007. He was Research Director for Citizens for Tax Justice, and spent a decade in Washington as a speechwriter and consultant for Democrats including the late Paul Simon, Joseph Biden, Carol Moseley Braun and Bill Clinton. He wrote Growth and Equity: Tax Policy Challenges for the 1990s. His essays and op-eds have been published in Artvoice, the Chicago Reader, the New York Times, the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Albany Times-Union, the Hartford Courant and other newspapers and magazines. Bruce Fisher writes a weekly column on politics and policy for Artvoice. He is also a commentator for the National Public Radio affiliate in Buffalo. He received his law degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and his BA and MA in history from the University of Illinois in Chicago, where he was a University Fellow.